Switching Carrier Gas:
Helium to Hydrogen
Safely moving from helium carrier gas to hydrogen with Element and Peak Scientific.
With our know-how and Peak Scientific's industry-leading gas generators, you can get your GC method up and running with minimal interruption. Stop relying on increasingly-scarce helium—switch carrier gas and achieve shorter runtimes with no loss of resolution.
Peak Scientific Precision Generator
The Precision Gas Generator, from Peak Scientific, is the safe option for using hydrogen as your GC carrier gas. While hydrogen cylinders are cheap, they are unsafe for lab use. Generators produce on demand and are flow-limited, so they won't generate explosive concentrations of hydrogen if a leak occurs.
Switching to hydrogen as carrier gas in GC (without mass spectromety) is straightforward and offers a shorter runtime (about 25 - 35%) for no net loss of resolution or change in elution order. In GC-MS methods, it can be done, it's just much more complex. We can consult on this.
While this is an upfront investment, it will yield a return as helium becomes increasingly expensive. Supply issues could eventually prevent you from conducting GC analyses altogether—now is the time to make the switch.
Trust Element to get your new GC method up and running with hydrogen as carrier gas
While switching from helium to an alternative carrier gases and revalidating can be straightforward for GC, we are still on-hand to guide you successfully through the process. Our know-how is particularly vital when you are running GC alongside mass spectrometry.
Due to the complexity of changing carrier gas for GC-MS, we recommend that you consult with us before making the change. We will consult with you to ascertain whether it will be successful and lay out all the steps that need to be in place to make the change. Changing carrier gas for GC-MS needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Contact our technical support team to discuss how you can change carrier gas in your GC and GC-MS process and move away from the ever-increasing demands of helium.
Get Trained up on Helium Transition
on CHROMacademy
We have developed a training program on CHROMacademy to help you understand how and why you should use a variety of alternative carrier gases. It's not the first "Helium Crisis" and it won;t be the last, so get trained up on what to do.
We have a comprehensive bank of training content on all things GC and GC-MS, as well as other applications of chromatography.
